Whenever I stumble across a big photo competition I approach with caution. The bigger the promoter(s) and prize(s) on offer the greater my caution. The first port of call is always the terms and conditions where depressingly often you’ll find some legalise along the following lines;

grant us an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual right and license to: (i) use, reproduce, publish, modify, perform and display the Entry . . . .. .  use the image in future campaigns, promotions, screensaver and wallpaper packs whether related to this Competition or not . . .. . . hereby irrevocably and unconditionally waive in perpetuity the benefit of any provision of law known as moral rights . . . . . . . understand that you will not receive any compensation or credit for use of your Entry . . .

Affectionately known as a rights grab. Often the worst perpetrators are media organisations, in this instance the terms above are from Bing’s current Your Britain photography competition. Some chapee called Dizzee Rascal is fronting it with his photos, a ‘celeberity’ of some sort presumably? The prize on offer is £10,000 for the lucky winner (it’s a tawdry prancing with cigars public popularity contest so yes I do mean lucky) which is enough to assuredly net them a flood of entries and build a nice little exclusive RF collection for next to nothing.

The organisations that run these contests are the ones that understand the value of great images but would rather aquire them on the sly instead of licensing them fairly. If you think you’ve got a great photo do not enter it into this or any other competition with similar terms; you probably will not win but you will definitely have given away your image to Bing for nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bill’s not short of a bob or two is he? He can pay. He should even understand licensing; he owns Corbis!

The rights grab aspect of this really isn’t a surprise, sadly it is all too common. It is a shame though because Bing are doing a great job using photography creatively on their homepage but once they’ve grabbed the rights to every unsuspecting entry into this competition they’re unlikely to be in the market to license any more images for a while.

Photography competitions? Approach with extreme caution. Always read the T&C’s. Walk away.